Quezon City school gets bomb threats, suspends classes

MANILA, Philippines - An elementary school in Quezon City suspended classes yesterday after a school official received two bomb threats.

Superintendent Franklin Moises Mabanag, chief of the District Mobile Group (DMG) of the Quezon City Police District (QCPD), said Eilene Antonio, treasurer of the school’s parents and teachers association at Bago Bantay Elementary School, received the first bomb threat through a text message at around 7 a.m.According to the text message, six bombs were planted in the school, and the sender left it to Antonio to inform the principal.

“You’ll regret it for life if many lives of children are lost. I am not joking, the bombs are in the SB Building and at the Grade 2 area,” the text message stated in Filipino.

Inspector Arnulfo Franco, chief the QCPD-DMG’s Explosives and Ordnance Division, said when they arrived at the school, the children were already gathered at the covered court.“We advised them that should the bomb threat happen again, they should contain the children inside the classrooms because it would be easier to control them there,” Franco said.Two minutes later, the same school official received the same threat from the same cellular phone number. “When I called up the number, I was hearing familiar sounds so it could be that the sender of the text message was someone from the (same) area,” Franco said.Mabanag said the threat turned out to be a hoax after policemen searched school grounds and premises.Franco said they just advised the school principal to completely suspend classes following concerns from parents about the safety of their children.According to Mabanag, their initial investigation found unconfirmed reports about teachers being at odds with each other. He said they were looking into a possible link between teachers’ conflicts and the bomb threats.